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Strimzi: Unrestricted access to all Secrets within namespace watched by the Topic operator

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jun 17, 2026 in strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator

Package

maven io.strimzi:strimzi (Maven)

Affected versions

<= 1.0.0

Patched versions

1.0.1

Description

Impact

When only the Topic or only the User operators are deployed as part of the Entity Operator in the Kafka custom resource, the RBAC rights are not following the principle of least-privilege and the Entity Operator ServiceAccount still has access rights corresponding to both operators. That might allow the ServiceAccount to access KafkaUser custom resources and Secrets when the User operator is not deployed and access KafkaTopic custom resources when the Topic operator is not deployed.

Patches

The issue is fixed in Strimzi 1.0.1 and 1.1.0.

Workarounds

There is no workaround for this issue.

References

@ppatierno ppatierno published to strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator Jun 17, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jun 18, 2026
Reviewed Jun 18, 2026

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Adjacent
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N

EPSS score

Weaknesses

Improper Privilege Management

The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Learn more on MITRE.

Least Privilege Violation

The elevated privilege level required to perform operations such as chroot() should be dropped immediately after the operation is performed. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2026-55226

GHSA ID

GHSA-r427-j2h7-wv3m

Source code

Credits

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